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My first side project idea. Need your genuine feedback! 🙇‍♀️

Hey guys,

I’m working on my first side project idea, a one-stop demo/explainer video creator tailored for indie hackers and startup founders. It has all the features you need to create a captivating screencast-based demo/explainer video in minutes. So you don’t have to juggle between tools for recording, editing, and beautifying the video. Also, no design or video editing skills are required.

Some of the features I’m planning to add to ease the work:

  • Screen, webcam, and audio recording with real-time annotation
  • Scrolling teleprompter to avoid accidentally forgetting what to say next
  • Customizable cursor styles, following cursor movement, and zooming in mouse clicks
  • Falling emojis and sound effects to enhance the mood when displaying your product’s aha moments
  • Make edits with simple clicks, like splitting videos, cutting out and speeding up clips, adding CTA buttons, etc.
  • Add background around the video to make it more visually appealing
  • AI removal of background noise to ensure your voice is crystal-clear
  • Automatic subtitles that you can review and edit for 100% accuracy
  • Output aspect ratio for social media platforms, like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
  • And more...

I've wrapped up a landing page for it: https://gemoo.com/tools/explainer-video-creator/

As this is my first product idea, I really need your insights on it. Thanks in advance! 🙇‍♀️

posted to Icon for group Ideas and Validation
Ideas and Validation
on June 25, 2023
  1. 3

    Hey Jocelyn,

    Thanks for sharing your landing page! I recorded my first impressions before I'd read through the features. Here's the video

    I've broken up my feedback into a few categories and tried my best to include bullet points on the main areas I mentioned in the video

    1. Jobs-to-be-done and value proposition

    • I immediately understood what the product is and what I could do with it. This is a great start
    • I'm imagining myself as a creator who wants to make tutorials but make them look more professional and keep my audience engaged.
    • I can't determine value because there isn't a price yet but I'm convinced that there's room for a tool like this in the market and would expect to pay between $20-50 once off (depending on feature set and product maturity) and some a recurring subscription of around $5-15/m if there were reasonable cloud offerings like hosting, analytics – a compelling feature that only works if I'm hosting my video with you

    2. Resilience and differentiation

    • I immediately started comparing VidHacker to CleanShot X or Loom. However I could quickly understand why I might choose VidHacker over those options; this tool is focused on tutorials/explainers. I'd buy CleanShot if I needed something more generic but with good macOS UX and Loom if I needed something for collaboration or enterprise
    • VidHacker feels differentiated because of the use case – I encourage you to emphasise those features more than saving time or highlighting table stakes features like subtitles or even noise reduction
    • I could imagine this product may have a high churn rate if it was an offline/local tool that required a subscription because I might buy one month, record my explainer and then cancel. Resilience may increase if there was a hosted option that felt compelling

    3. Execution

    • I like the aesthetic and the design captured my attention
    • CTA copy is fine but only if I really can Free Download or Purchase Now. Until then let's change it to be more honest about the waitlist
    • Speaking of the waitlist; I expected the modal to close when clicking outside of the modal or hitting escape. The X button wasn't immediately obvious and I pointed out why in the video
    • This may not be possible considering the product is still being developed but I'd like to see real screenshots and example videos
    • Small graphic details when looking at this in 4k. The AI feature has a GIF that looks pixelated, same with the ✅ buttons in Visually appealing background, even the blue cursor itself. If they can all be swapped to SVGs that'd be great
    • Output size balancing could use some copy reworking as mentioned and while the dropdown is cool I think I'd more easily understand the value of the feature if I could visually skim and see platform logos. I don't need to see all the options that might be presented in the settings of the app to understand the benefit of the feature
    • Minor padding inconsistencies and some text that uses rem sizing scales down too small on mobile
    • Let's ditch the Times New Roman in the footer and consider using a CSS gradient rather than the image background because it clips on certain screen sizes. Also the border colour is different in the footer compared to the rest of the sections

    Please let me know if you've got any questions or feel free to shoot me a message if you'd like me to take a second look at it in the future.

    Thanks again for sharing and keep up the good work! There's a long road ahead but you've made a great start

    1. 2

      Oh Aldo, how can I thank you enough for your detailed and comprehensive feedback on both the product and landing page! 🙏

      It's so great to know you get the differentiation of VidHacker from Loom. I've been asked about "how it differentiates from Loom" so many times, and that lead me to consider revamping my landing page, exactly as you said, I should focus more on the use case, that's more obvious to tell the difference. Thank you for pointing it out!

      Also, the CTAs, you're right, I should be more honest on it with a Join waitlist button. Would change that too.

      The screenshot and demo video, yes, I've got feedback on that from other fellows too. As you said, I could not give that right now. But will try my best to make them available asap.

      Will optimize the graphic and text details in my next update of the landing page too.

      Once again, thank you sooooooo much for giving me so great feedback! It really helps a tooooooon! 🙇‍♀️

      1. 1

        That's great to see Josie! Looking forward to seeing how you progress

        I've been asked about "how it differentiates from Loom" so many times

        This is such a good point. The fact that you've heard the question before leads me to believe if your landing page confidently addresses it right at the start and it resonates with people you'll be in a great position.

        To continue the idea – what if you tried to research the Loom forums or wherever their customer's complain to find pain points Loom isn't addressing? They're a big company now and they need to prioritise their enterprise clients much more than indie hackers.

        Essentially we're looking for feature's that would create an Innovator's Dilemma for Loom

  2. 2

    I love the idea for the tool, but I think execution is extremely critical for it's success. If it's very easy to use I think it would thrive, if it's difficult to use I think it will fail.

    1. 1

      So glad you love the idea! Yes, I will try the best to make it as easy as possible to use.

  3. 2

    Nice to see this. I am glad you are building the waitlist that most people ignore to do.

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